The Acrolaw Blog is a resource for lawyers, law firms, paralegals, legal IT pros and anyone interested in the use of Acrobat in the legal community. Rick Borstein, blog author, is a Principal Solutions Consultant with Adobe Systems Incorporated.

A click-thru (sometimes called ClickWrap) agreement is a software or web-based acceptance of terms.

Click-thru agreements rely on the recipient clicking "OK" or "I agree" to accept the terms of the agreement.

I recently received this email message about Click-thru PDF agreements:

Is it possible to create a message that appears prior to a [PDF] document being opened to accept terms and conditions? If the user would click "Yes" the PDF would open. If the user click "No" the document would close.

Short answer: Yes!

Do Click-thru Agreements have Legal Precedent?

Yes, there are a number legal decisions on the subject.

The earliest reference I found was to ProCD v. Zeidenberg (text), which established that clicking a button in a software program constituted acceptance of terms.

When you receive a letter in the mail, most of us assume it hasn’t been tampered with by inspecting the seal or looking for suspicious markings. The outside of the envelope tells us who sent the materials. The envelope itself may contain several documents, but we don’t know which ones until we open the envelope itself.

Unfortunately, in the digital world, securely packaging several documents is more complex.

One possibility is to create a zip archive of the files. Zip archives compress the files, but unfortunately can also contain viruses. Today, many anti-spam programs block zip files. Zip archives also don’t tell us what’s inside and if we should open it. Worse, many clients don’t know how to work with Zip files.

An Acrobat Security Envelope is an excellent alternative. A PDF acts as a secure container to send files to your client.

Since Acrobat files can contain attachments, Acrobat can be used as a container for other types of files.

Acrobat 7 offers the ability to create a digital facsimile of an envelope containing other files:

Since the file is an ordinary PDF, all your client needs is the free Adobe Reader to open the file.

Not long ago, I met an attorney who specialized in family law, especially divorce cases. The attorney had an issue come up with a client and wanted to know more about Acrobat security.

His client, the wife in the divorce proceedings, worked two jobs and had a hectic schedule. Email communication would have been the likely solution; however the husband and wife still resided in the same home and shared the same computer and email account.

What to do?

Sensitive matters make for concerned clients. Using Adobe Acrobat security, it is easy to password protect files from prying eyes.

All communications to the client were sent as encrypted PDFs which required a password to be viewed. This offered his client a high level of confidence that the spouse would not be able to open and read information sent from his office.